A logging railroad known as Bogle Spur snaked from here up the North Fork of the St. Joe River for seven miles. The spur was built to salvage timber killed during the 1910 fires. The little railroad operated from 1912 to 1915. When the logging railroad was abandoned the siding's name was changed to Pearson.
To move the log cars along this line, the logging contractors Bogle & Callahan purchased two 120,000-pound Shay geared locomotives.
Constructed for steep temporary logging railroads, the Shays could haul 126 tons of logs up a six percent grade. To get the log cars up from the North Fork below to the Milwaukee main line where you are now standing, Bogle & Callahan built a steep switchback connection. The operation shipped up to 30 rail cars of salvaged logs a day out of Bogle Spur. When the timber was gone the Shays were sold and the loggers moved on.
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The Bogle Spur Switchback
The Shay, steam powered, geared logging locomotives used on the Bogle operation produced 24,000 lbs. of tractive effort. Lima Locomotive & Machine Works of Lima, Ohio built these powerful little engines.
Pistons on the right side of the boiler turned a long horizontally-joined drive shaft geared to the right-hand drive trucks. The boiler was offset to the left to counter-balance the drive system.
From the 1890s, until finally being replaced by logging trucks in the 1950s, Shay engines were the most popular and numerous logging locomotives used in the western U.S.
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